The recently retired Andre Agassi returned to tennis for one night at the weekend, at an exhibition in Santiago, Chile. He played against another former World No. 1, local idol Marcelo Rios, who defeated Agassi 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.

The event took place at a full Arena Santiago, an indoor court with a capacity of 13,000.

Before the event, Agassi had a busy agenda. On Thursday, he gave a press conference and later had an hour of practice with Chile’s Olympic gold medalist Nicolas Massu, At night, he attended a cocktail hosted by Craig Kelly, US Ambassador to Chile. On Friday morning, and in complete privacy, he held two tennis clinics, one for some of the best Chilean junior players, and another one for wheelchair players.

This was Agassi’s first match folloiwng his retirement at last year's US Open.

Agassi said: “I am honored to be here and enjoy Santiago. I congratulate Marcelo (Ríos) for his great level of play. Six months ago, when I retired, I promised I would return to play with him."

Ríos said: “This is one of the exhibitions that I have enjoyed most. We are two retired players, obviously the level is not the same as when we were professionals, but playing three sets at this level says that we can still do something on the court”.

Hello everyone!
I'm new at this forum and I just wanted to tell you about the exhibition match Agassi played against Rios in Chile a couple of weeks ago.
I'm a big fan of Andre and as soon as I found out that he was coming south I was determined: I had to see him! So off I went and I was able to see the match. By the way, I'm a big fan of tennis but I never saw a tennis match on a tennis court before, and to watch Andre play it was a dream come true for me! When he went to the center of the court and did his usual "bows and kisses" I just couldn't believe it!
The people at the stadium rooted for Rios all the time and almost nobody applauded Andre's points. I think this was rather rude, since ot was an exhibition match.
Rios serve was extremely weak, and Andre's, on the other hand, was very powerful. Someone stated that he was overweighted but that's just not true. His tennis was almost as good as it was last year, and I think he felt his bad back in the third set, but he managed to deliver some excellent plays.
In the end, rios won the match, but I suspect it was arranged that way, after all it was Rios' playing in his country for the first time in a long time.
I anjoyed the match a lot and had a happy return to Argentina.